Yangon's famed -- and gigantic -- Shwedagon pagoda. Finally putting up a picture, hoping you can see the sublime of the mathematical in its sheer size and grandeur.

Photo cred: jax

But I can't help liking the smaller shrines better, like this little one.

And best of all I like the bells, like these three (including one detail).

Every visitor who comes to Yangon goes to see Shwedagon, as well they should. But I hope they step away from the gold and glitz and commune a bit with all the care and love that went into even the tiniest details of this majestic place. I think Myanmar likes to emphasize the spiritual impact of the big, but I keep being moved by the little -- here, there, often, always.

Jack Gilbert, a "poet" whom I tend to scorn but who, sometimes, in a single line or two, moves me so much it physically hurts, wrote this -- in his poem "Ruins and Wabi":

"The Japanese think it strange we paint our old wooden houses when it takes so long to find the wabi in them. They prefer the bonsai tree after the valiant blossoming is over, the leaves fallen. When bareness reveals a merit born in the vegetable struggling.”

I've asked some Japanese people about "wabi" and, apparently, he's mistranslating it, despite the fact that he had a Japanese wife (which pretty much sums up my take on him), and yet...

If his version of "wabi" doesn't exist, it should. I will try to embrace this imagined wabi as my face continues to wrinkle, cuneiform letter by cuneiform letter, like the old Robert Redford's. I will try to remember it as I lose my strength, my flexibility, my memory, my recovery, my everything -- as Gilbert himself says (twice in his corpus), "small by small."

I am reminded of it when I look at the former Minister's Office in Yangon, now almost in rubble, though showing signs of reconstruction. Six years ago, it seemed deserted, but now I see laborers there on occasion and the odd wheelbarrow. But what moves me the most are the plants growing unbidden in the windowsills, along the rooftop -- as if the whole thing were a giant terrarium.

A man recently told me that shiitake grow effortlessly on fallen oak. So, as my back fails today to bend to the degree I think it should, and as I catch myself repeating the same story to the same listener -- and perhaps not for the first time -- I realize that, yes, there was a me that was oak, and there is or will be a me that is shiitake.

These were fried all the way through, so they lacked the exploding coconut-cream innards that the ones in Cambodia had. (Though to be completely frank, I thought the ones in Cambodia were much better; these were more like gritty, oily plantain chips.) As a sustainable protein source, however, they should definitely be cultivated. As a taste, well, I think the cultivation should be rather more optional...

No, not well and certainly not always, but this week I started having conversations of substance that didn't follow the canned scripts of my textbooks.

And then this happened:

Please eat the liquid on the far right, I entreat you.

Yes, that is a dhosa, but it is a very special dhosa; it's a dhosa I only found out about because I ended up talking at length — in Burmese — with a man about how good the Muslim food here is. He asked me if I had had this and that (I had), I successfully referred to varieties of tamarind sauces and potato curries, and when we spoke of dhosas, he said there was a special one that came with fish-curry liquid that I could go get on 53rd street.

Well.

53rd street is rather dingy and untrafficked, so you can imagine the surprise of the vendor when I strolled up and asked for his specialty. His smile was incredible. More incredible, as I’m sure you’ve gathered, was the fish curry liquid itself, especially with his gorgeous dhosa and the egg fried into it. Wow.

Maybe I would have stumbled upon this place had I not spoken Burmese, and maybe I would have seen someone eating the trademark sauce and ordered it, but the fact that it came to me like a reward for all the hours of study made me almost cry.

And, as long we’re discussing Burmese Muslim food, here’s a snap of the young women who make my favorite chapatis and tamarind sauces.

And finally, how could I not share another of Chi Mya's (also Muslim) masterpieces: curried kidneys, dhal, okra, hot chili paste, cucumbers and two mystery vegetables (one a very bitter but delicious leaf, the other almost a cactus). I finally broached the topic of him teaching me, saying that next year I would speak well and he would have to show me how to make his food. He said he would. The master plan is coming together...

Everyone asks me why I’m here, why I’m learning Burmese, why I’m studying so hard. If I just say that a young couple on the train smiled at me and then brought me a boiled egg, does that explain? Or that after chatting in Burmaglish with my cab driver for a half an hour he insisted that I take home his dinner that he had in a bag next to him?

That’s not all — by far. There’s a Christian family moving to America in December, and I’m helping their daughters prep for the SAT essay. The father always calls me a blessing sent by God, and they serve me beautiful food until I’m in so full I have to go rest.

Last night I walked past the big mosque in search of new foods. I ended up eating a dhosa with a Muslim man who was concerned about my blood pressure because I have no wife. Then I had chapati and potato curry with Hindu boys, sitting at the entrance to a gutted building to be out of the rain.

My Burmese conversation partner brought me shirts made in her village. She got the biggest size, and they stretch across me tautly but fit just so. One is a lovely check; the other almost a bowling shirt with very heavy embroidering. The aesthetic is markedly alien, but I suspect it is very fancy. I have been invited to her village and will go when my Burmese is better. It is the hottest place in Myanmar — hell’s very hubs — but the shirts are proof against the heat, I am told.

Walking down the street, i get thumbs up and hoots of approval from men of all ages. They love my longyis. Women smile covertly, so I speak to them and make them blush. I stop to get a kon-ya (betel nut wrapped with aromatics in a leaf, what the Hindus call paan), and, again, the vendor won’t charge me. He probably makes $3/day.

The tea vendor near the train station won’t charge me either. I sit and chat with the monks and the old men, sweating through all of my clothes. I keep trying, but he won’t take my money. I’m going to bring back chocolate for him and his family.

There are boatmen on the river in little skiffs that will take me and my bike to the other side. On the way, we’ll dodge barges and loaded container-tankers, 100-feet high. There are villages past the far shore and industrial complexes amid the palm trees. None of it makes it onto the big map of the city, nor, of course, is it mentioned in the guide books. It will be another world.

And next year, assuming I can converse with some amount of ease, I will go far afield. Leave behind all English, all hotels, all maps. Leave electricity, running water, meat. Abandon any hope of a bed, a spoon, or any sense of aptitude. Forget familiarity.

To have and have not — the life you’ve known and its teeming opposite, each putting the other in starkest relief — it’s a recipe for gratitude. Why would I not learn Burmese?

Scene like the one I was in at this year's Thingyan, the Burmese water festival during the four days leading up to New Year. (credit:http://myanmar-cefa.or.jp/myanmar_tourism_tokyo/img/myanmar/zaw_zaw_tun_108a1_40_myanmar_new_year_festival.jpg)

Happy Myanmar new year!

My 2015 in situ resolutions:

dance under firehoses whenever possible

risk GI distress fearlessly (and at least thrice daily)

learn the rest of the alphabet by next week — I’m close!

spend at least a month in a Buddhist monastery

schedule as many appointments for “nya nei nga na yi” as possible — and say it with pride

offer my soul to learn how to make Chi Mya’s curries

help people understand this stunningly contradictory — as perplexing as inspiring — country

and maybe drink a little more $1.85/bottle Burmese whiskey...

And, if you didn't see my post on Facebook, I spent about 4 hours in a throng just like the one above, in the heart of the swarm, dancing like a maniac, all the while pummeled by firehoses from above. I was kissed by six different burmese guys -- all complete strangers -- handed local whiskey in water bottles, danced with by every child and every grandmother, and so drenched that it killed my iPhone, even though I had it in a ziploc bag. Totally worth it!

Now, if you avoid the stages with the giant dance parties, that doesn't mean you're out of the soup. For four days, literally from morning till sunset all around the city, kids everywhere spray everyone with hoses -- some with serious nozzlage, occasionally taking out whole busloads of people -- and tossing buckets of ice water on anyone who comes close enough.

And i figured out quickly that there's no better target for them than a white guy on a bicycle. So I'd zoom in, ringing my bell wildly, take the bucket of frigidity to the face and then say, "Muh so bu!" (i'm not wet!) then circle back so they could get me again.

Obviously I love this country, so by now you probably think I'm completely biased, but that really was one hell of a party.

I started this on Facebook, but here’s a more thorough list of why the hotel staff thinks I’m crazy:

Virtually everyone who visits here only stays a night, as they leave for Bagan or Mandalay the next day — or just arrived from there and are flying home. I’ve been here a month.

I carry a dictionary with me everywhere like it was my colostomy bag or some other vital health necessity to have on my person.

Every morning they see me tracing out Burmese letters and pronouncing them to myself like I was in an imaginary preschool, trying to copy answers from Snuffalupagus’ homework.

By the time I’ve finished my chili-laden breakfast, my orthography practice, and my 6-12 tiny cups of tea, I have a bandeau of sweat fully seeped through both my undershirt and outershirt from navel to clavicle. (Do boiled beverages in 100-degree heat tend to have that effect…?)

I willfully stay in the 2nd-worst room in the hotel — the one right by the check-in desk — though I did upgrade from the orchid nursery I started in. Granted I tend to be roused (with the staff) every time a new guest arrives at 3 a.m., but at least I no longer wake to sodden clothing.

I come back from the gym most afternoons so drenched from head to toe I might has well have swam home. (I think my gym should advertise Bikram Weightlifting!) Mercifully my room has a drying rack.

I always have prodigious quantities of tea salad in my room — thanks to Zaw’s dad’s generosity — and the dense, mulchy odor of the fermented tea copulates with the dense, mulchy odor of my gym-clothing to create a jungle miasma probably akin to the breath of a hyena or some other carrion-eating, hot-mouthed mammal.

I eschew the toast, butter, and jam they offer at breakfast and instead take the local “pe pyo” (boiled baby chickpeas, served with fried rice and an egg) and, as mentioned, cover it with chilis. (And, note, most Burmese are physically terrified of hot peppers. it’s very fun to try to get them to eat them…) I’ve seen other foreigners get served the pe pyo, but they never seem to touch it.

When the staff does brave the effluvium of my room, they find an empty bottle of local whiskey in my trash every week or so, but no evidence of ice or mixers. (And another thing the Burmese are afraid of is drinking whiskey neat. Every time I do that, I get little head-cocking gestures from the other bar patrons that seem to mean, “Damn, dude.”)

I’ve spurned backpacks and instead gone the local route, toting a yellow plastic bag fashioned out of the plastic covering of a crate that once held 20 kilos of Me-O brand cat food. In the same way that black plastic trashbags are often called “Irish luggage,” I think these hand-sewn guys are Burmese working-class Louis Vuittons.

They often run into me at the street food vendors they frequent, my knees up by my ears as I crouch in an undersized chair, sweat dripping from my forearms onto my shorts’ hems, darkening them visibly.

Some days I speak to them in accurate Burmese and other days I utterly botch everything. I’ve known them since I started studying, so it’s a little like visiting your family and being thrown back into some atavistic version of yourself you forgot even existed. (ex: When I’m around my family, my handyman skills go out the window, while when I’m alone, I’m passably adroit..). Suffice it to say that the hotel guys make me nervous.

All the reasons all of you already know I’m crazy, which I think I wear pretty plainly on my sweat-soaked sleeves.

My eye slakes -- the melancholy rainbows of fading, brightness a-blitz against the grime, a thousand iterations coaxing white to green, as if the universe of color was calipered between the two shirts hanging from this balcony.

At other times, color takes the form of parable...

Or a caco-symphony... (undoctored iPhone snaps from the top of the Mingala market)

Here a kun: ya (paan) stand -- to test the amplitude of your rods and cones...

A kun:-ya stand for betel-chewers (similar to paan in India)

The white urn contains the lime they slake on each leaf prior to putting in the betel, tobacco, and all else

I love it, though you do have to discharge giant gobs of brick-colored sputum as you chew...

The cans themselves are amazing

Or here, where incense has its distinctive redolence -- only this time visually...

And have I mentioned the food? The genius of the hin (curry): my beloved Chi Mya's stand...

Chi Mya's stand (I got his name wrong in the earlier post; that was his daughter!)

Five shockingly short years ago, at the tail end of a 6-week stint in Southeast Asia, I happened to touch down in Yangon, erstwhile Rangoon, then capital of Myanmar, erstwhile Burma. I hadn’t had time to do much research, and I didn’t know what to expect. I knew that in 1988 there had been an election, but then the military had stepped in and said nah and took over themselves. I knew they changed the name of the country and capital (and ultimately built a new city in the jungle and moved the seat of power there). I knew their borders had been closed to tourists until soon before, that most of the country was strictly off-limits (and still is), that you were required to exchange a certain amount of money per day, and that most of that money went to the military, thus putting Myanmar on most people’s Scheiss list.

But there I was — and wow how it proved to be awesome. As I recount earlier on this blog (thanks, Squarespace for such easy navigation...), I happened to meet a Burmese guy who ran a English-language school, volunteered to speak to his students — mostly monks — and found the people (and later the food) utterly irresistible. i resolved that the next time I could take a trip, I’d come back and spend significant time.

In my travels I had already found that the easiest way to get local people to trust you was to sit down and eat street food (or drink homemade liquor with them or smoke really skanky tobacco…), but nowhere did my approach have more impact than here, and nowhere did learning 20 words of the language create more happiness.

And the best was “luh-peh tho’” (tea salad). I had had it in NY — and loved it — and one of the monks told me how to say the name, so I would stop every time I saw it on the street, then sit in a kindergarten-sized plastic chair and wolf it down (while drinking 6-12 cups of hot tea in the 90-degree heat).

Those were the most precious hours; the interactions with the vendors, their families, the passersby, the other patrons were all so joyful and comedic. There was still very little tourism at that point, so I was quite an oddity anyway, but plunked down on the sidewalk, smiling, saying “luh-peh tho’” and giving the thumbs up as people walked by me, I might as well have been a giant clown juggling tilapia. But I also believe (and of course I might be imagining) that the people felt that I was showing marked appreciation of their country — an appreciation they weren’t getting from pretty much anywhere in the world at that time. I’ve since been told how cut off Burmese people felt from the rest of the world, how isolated. So eating a uniquely Burmese dish in full view was probably as good a thing as a non-speaker could possibly do.

And so I’m back, and I eat luh-peh tho’ almost every day. Now I know how to pronounce it properly, how to say “I’m American, but, yes, I love Burmese food and people. Tea salad is my favorite! I was here five years ago and wanted to come back, and I’m so happy now that I’m here,” and it clearly has an impact. But as delightful as it is now, it still pales a little compared to how it was then.

At that point, I think it was critical. And somehow in my standard bumbling fashion, I had lucked into the easiest and most delicious way to say “I adore you” to a people that hadn’t been hearing that anywhere near enough.

It's even better when you eat a mini garlic clove and chile with every bite!

The next morning I got this: a tomato salad with all the incredible things they do with salads here, and a different fish curry, so sublime that I didn't want to transfer it to my plate for fear of leaving a film of residue that I wouldn't be able to eat. I think angels take turns tilting their heads back and having other angels drip this sauce into their mouths...

Happily, my master plan of ultimately asking the the chef (he earns the designation, despite running a street-side stand) for lessons is making progress. Now that I'm taking intensive Burmese language courses every day, he comes and speaks to me while I'm eating. Today I met his wife and daughter and learned his name -- Aysuoh (phonetically) -- and religion: Muslim. I had to confess to being an infidel, and I fear I accidentally said I have no family. He might well think his cooking is all I have left in this world -- or the next.

This last wasn't by him, so it wasn't transcendent, but if you were to have two quarters in your pocket and not know what to do with them, how about a chickpea soup/salad with potato and a zillion other little flavor and texture ingredients working together to make each bite a string concerto?

50 cents gets you this.

And, while I was eating the above, I ended up having a conversation with a young guy (in English) who invited me to go with him in April to his home village. The people here -- if you can believe it -- are actually even better than the food. This place is magical.

I took a long walk today over a huge bridge along what felt like a highway. But it was worth it; the views were incredible, and then I had a wonderful lunch experience, doted over by the girl in the picture below and her mom (who kept giving me more food until I literally said I was in pain). I will go back with my video camera, but for now, here's the best I could do with my iPhone4...

As those of you who read this blog regularly know, I'm rather obsessed with the idea of showing respect to the places I go and integrating as much as possible with people who rarely or never have contact with foreigners. I recently summed up the dilemma with this facebook post:

Unless I’m in a crummy part of town and eating, I’m taken to be a gawking outsider and get perpetual stink-eye. But once I order food, say a few Burmese words, and sit down in a minuscule plastic chair, suddenly everyone is laughing and all is wonderful. But there are only so many meals i can manage in a day! It’s literally gotten to the point where i try to walk briskly enough as to be anonymous and unobtrusive until I find a seedy neighborhood, then I quickly try to pick a stall/stand, as the ones I don’t pick think i’m only leering. Once I’ve finished, I effectively have to run home before I offend anyone else and until I can work up an appetite again.

Today provided an excellent example: I ended up in an exceedingly dingy bar in slum Yangon (video to follow, when I can get it to upload) and had a blast with the locals who were bringing me food and cheroots and mountain hooch, while I was handing out shots of Burmese whiskey. The one guy who spoke a little English told me they had never had a white person in there before.

That’s my approach to travel, and I’ve realized I don’t like it any other way. So for anyone interested in doing likewise, i thought I'd compile my accumulated wisdom on how to invert the normal dynamic so you become the spectacle for their amusement, instead of them being the zoo you're ambling through with your Nikon. (Forgive the soap box.) And while i used to be envious of Anthony Bourdain and his excellent shows, I realize now that having a cameraman/crew would also ruin the effect that I'm after, so I'm happier doing it my way.

Tips:

Cross train tracks. Then try to cross a bridge. Never go toward the city center or business district

Choose places where you can sit close to the cook and she can see your reactions. Make pleasure faces/gestures while eating

Take pictures of the food but not of people — or places unless no one is watching (the still above is an exception, as the guys in the bar asked me to take pictures with them)

Know your few words (delicious, favorite, thank you, etc) in the local tongue but always bring a dictionary as well

Avoid cleanliness, ceilings, doors, and anything with electricity

Seek out neighborhoods without pavement; once the children start following you and people come out of their doors to stare, you’re there

Chose a place with seating; take-away destroys the purpose

Say their version of hello to everyone who stares at / acknowledges you as you’re walking

Don’t use your left hand to touch food, in case there are convives who don’t have plumbing

Try to avoid raw meat or fermented foods; they can get quite odd and/or make you ill. (i’ve had some raw tripe that tested my mettle.) Careful with the free water but don’t buy or bring bottled water or ostentatious drinks; drink tea instead

Eat every speck of food; more on this in a later post

Avoid deep-fried food, as it fills you up and limits how many things you can try

Make lots of eye contact and say thank you for everything

Share a table with people whenever possible

Pay for first meal with a bill big enough to cover it but not so big as to make change a problem. Then you’ll know the base price-point for future meals and can use smaller bills

Eat as many chilis as you can handle so they can see you’re not a wimp and might even laugh at how much you like spicy food

Don’t wear sunglasses; as you walk, everyone needs to be able to see your eyes, and you need to look humble and joyful

Try to get dinner in before sundown so you can see other people well (and your pictures will come out better)